Ed Neuhaus 
Austin gets about $280 per square foot right now. Houston gets $170. That is a 65% premium to live in a city with fewer people, worse public transit, and property taxes that will make your eyes water. So why do 50,000 people still move to Austin every year?
That is the question I get from relocators constantly. And the honest answer is that each of these four cities wins at different things. I have been selling real estate in Austin since 2007 and I am obviously biased. But I have also helped families move FROM Austin to Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio when those cities made more sense for their situation. So lets do this honestly.
According to the Texas Real Estate Research Center and the latest MLS data, here is what you are looking at for median home prices across all four metros in early 2026: Austin sits around $435,000, Dallas-Fort Worth at $375,000, San Antonio at $300,000, and Houston at $330,000. That is a $135,000 spread from top to bottom. Not a rounding error.
The Housing Math Nobody Wants to Talk About
Lets start with the thing everyone cares about most.
Austin is the most expensive of the four and it is not close. At $435,000 median sale price, you are paying a significant premium over Dallas ($375K), Houston ($330K), and San Antonio ($300K). And before you say “yeah but Austin has better appreciation,” lets pump the brakes. Austin home values actually dropped about 3% year over year. Dallas fell even harder at around 5%. Houston was the most stable of the four, holding roughly flat.
So San Antonio is currently the cheapest and Houston is the most stable. I know. That is not what the Austin guy is supposed to tell you.
But here is where it gets more interesting. Property taxes amplify the gap. On a median-priced Austin home you are paying roughly $8,250 per year in property taxes at a 1.9% effective rate (and yeah that includes your homestead exemption, this is AFTER it). On a median San Antonio home at a similar rate, that drops to about $6,300. On a median Houston home, about $6,600. That is still a $2,000 a year gap between Austin and San Antonio. Every year. Forever.
The thing Benjamin Graham wrote about in The Intelligent Investor applies here. The best investment is not always the asset with the highest sticker price. Sometimes it is the one that lets you keep more of what you earn.
If you want a deeper dive on the Austin and San Antonio comparison specifically, we wrote a whole breakdown of the real estate math between those two metros.
Jobs: Where the Money Actually Is
Austin’s tech scene gets all the headlines and I get it. Apple, Tesla, Meta, Oracle, Dell. The concentration of tech talent per capita is still unmatched in Texas. According to CompTIA projections, Austin is adding about 7,750 tech jobs in 2025, putting it at number 5 nationally.
But Dallas is adding nearly 14,000 tech jobs. Almost double Austin’s number. And Dallas has something Austin does not have as much of: corporate headquarters. AT&T, Texas Instruments, American Airlines, CBRE, Kimberly-Clark. The DFW metro has diversified beyond tech into financial services, logistics, and defense in a way that makes it more recession-resistant.
Houston is a different animal entirely. Energy is still king (this is Houston, come on) but the city has been quietly building out biomedical, aerospace, and AI infrastructure. Nvidia and Foxconn are building an AI supercomputer factory in Houston, and Nvidia partnered with Wistron on another facility in Dallas. That is not nothing.
San Antonio is the sleeper. Cybersecurity is the play, driven by Joint Base San Antonio and NSA Texas. The city added fewer raw tech jobs (about 1,600) but if you work in government, defense, or cybersecurity, San Antonio might be your best bet in the state. The cost of living is so low that your salary goes further even if the number on the check is smaller.
Here is my take after watching people relocate for 19 years. If you are in tech and want startup energy and venture capital access, Austin is still the move. If you want corporate stability with a big paycheck, look at Dallas. Houston is for energy, engineering, and medical. San Antonio is for people who want to actually keep most of their paycheck and do not need to be in the “cool” city. No judgment either way right.
Traffic and Getting Around
None of these cities are good at this. Lets just get that out of the way.
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute tracks this stuff and their 2025 Urban Mobility Report tells the real story. Houston commuters lose 77 hours per year to congestion. Dallas loses 69 hours. Austin loses 64. San Antonio loses 48.
Average commute times are closer than you would think. Austin averages 28 minutes, Houston and Dallas about 26, San Antonio 25. But those averages hide the pain. Try driving MoPac at 5:15 on a Tuesday. Or I-35 through downtown Austin. Or 610 in Houston during… well any time really.
Austin has the worst public transit of the four. I wish that was not true but Capital Metro’s bus system is fine and Project Connect is building light rail, but it is years away from mattering. Houston actually has a functional light rail system (METRORail). Dallas has DART, which covers more area. San Antonio’s VIA is bus-only but it is getting a rapid transit line.
If commute quality is your top priority, San Antonio wins this one. Smaller metro, less congestion, shorter commutes. Not even close.
Food and Culture (Where Things Get Subjective)
Ok so this is where I am going to lose objectivity because I love Austin’s food scene. But lets try.
Houston has the best food in Texas. There, I said it. The diversity of the restaurant scene is just on a different level. Vietnamese, Nigerian, Indian, Salvadoran, Chinese regional cooking. Houston’s food culture is driven by immigration patterns that go back decades, and the result is a city where you can eat Vietnamese crawfish at 11pm on a Wednesday for twelve bucks. Austin’s food scene is excellent (Birdie’s won Food and Wine Restaurant of the Year, Nixta has a Michelin Green Star, the barbecue is obviously legendary) but it leans toward elevated casual dining and food trucks. Great quality, less breadth.
Dallas has an underrated dining scene. Deep Ellum and Bishop Arts have been putting out serious restaurants for years. The steakhouse culture is real. San Antonio’s food identity is Tex-Mex and it owns that category harder than any city in America. The Riverwalk restaurants are tourist traps (sorry, they are) but get into the neighborhoods and the food is incredible.
For live music, Austin still wins nationally. But Dallas has a massive arena circuit and Houston’s hip hop and R&B scene is culturally significant in ways that Austin’s indie rock vibe just is not.
Outdoor Life and Weather
This is Austin’s ace card and everybody knows it.
Barton Springs, Lady Bird Lake, the Greenbelt, Lake Travis, Enchanted Rock, the entire Hill Country. The outdoor recreation access within 30 minutes of downtown Austin is genuinely world-class. I live in Bee Cave and can be on Lake Travis in 10 minutes. That never gets old.
San Antonio has the River Walk (more of a cultural attraction than an outdoor one) and some nice state parks. But the Hill Country is really Austin’s backyard, not San Antonio’s. Houston is flat. Very flat. You have Galveston Beach about an hour away and Buffalo Bayou Park is nice, but “outdoor recreation” and “Houston” are not typically in the same sentence. Dallas has some solid lakes (Lake Ray Hubbard, Grapevine Lake) but the terrain is prairie, not Hill Country.
Weather is a trade-off everywhere. All four cities are brutally hot in summer. Austin and San Antonio hit 100+ regularly from June through September. Houston adds crippling humidity to that equation (I have friends in Houston who describe August as “breathing through a wet blanket” and honestly they are not wrong). Dallas gets actual winter weather, including ice storms that shut the city down. Austin and San Antonio get the occasional freeze but nothing like what DFW deals with.
If you want to be outside, Austin is the clear winner. And I would say that even if I did not live here.
Raising a Family
All four metros have strong school districts but they are distributed differently.
Austin’s best districts (Eanes ISD, Lake Travis ISD, Dripping Springs ISD) are concentrated in West Austin and the Hill Country. We have written a whole comparison of those three districts if you want the details. The trade-off is cost. Getting into Eanes ISD means buying in Westlake, and the median there is around $2.6 million.
Dallas has Highland Park ISD and Southlake Carroll ISD, which are among the top districts in the entire state. Frisco ISD is excellent and more affordable. Houston has The Woodlands (Conroe ISD), Katy ISD, and Cy-Fair ISD, all of which perform well and sit in more affordable housing.
San Antonio has excellent magnet and specialty programs but the base district (San Antonio ISD) is uneven. North East ISD and Alamo Heights ISD are the stronger options.
For families who want excellent schools without paying $800K plus, Houston and Dallas suburbs offer the best value. I am being honest about that even though it does not help my business. The suburbs north of Houston (The Woodlands, Katy) give you a top-tier school district, a big new house, and a sub-$400K price tag. That same combination in Austin’s best districts would cost you double.
Growth and Where Things Are Headed
The U.S. Census Bureau’s latest data shows DFW adding 152,000 residents in a single year, the largest numeric gain of any metro in the country. Houston added 140,000 (second nationally). Austin added about 50,000 and San Antonio about 48,000.
But growth rate and raw numbers tell different stories. Austin was the number 3 destination nationally for U-Haul movers in 2025. The people choosing Austin tend to be higher-income tech workers, entrepreneurs, and remote workers who WANT to be here. DFW and Houston are growing faster in raw numbers partly because they are just bigger to begin with, and partly because their lower cost of entry attracts a broader range of relocators.
The Austin-San Antonio corridor is projected to essentially merge by 2050, adding over 3 million residents along I-35. That is going to create a megaregion, and buying real estate along that corridor now (think Kyle, Buda, San Marcos, New Braunfels) is a long-term play that I think pays off. We broke that down in our Kyle vs Buda vs San Marcos comparison.
So Which City Should You Pick?
After 19 years of helping people relocate, here is how I would frame it.
Pick Austin if you work in tech or can work remotely, you value outdoor recreation and culture over square footage, you are ok paying a premium for lifestyle, and you want to be somewhere that still feels like it has creative energy (even if it is more expensive than it used to be).
Pick Dallas if you want a corporate job market with high ceilings, you care about sports (Cowboys, Mavericks, Rangers, Stars), you want more house for your money than Austin without giving up urban amenities, and you do not mind actual winter weather.
Pick Houston if you want the most house for your money in a major Texas metro, you work in energy, medical, or engineering, you are a serious foodie, and you are fine with humidity that feels like it has a personal vendetta against you.
Pick San Antonio if you want the lowest cost of living of any major Texas city, you work in government, military, or cybersecurity, you want a slower pace without giving up city amenities, and you prefer to keep more of your paycheck rather than spending it on a zip code.
And honestly, there is no wrong answer. All four of these cities have no state income tax, strong job markets, and a cost of living below the national metro average. You are picking between good options. That is a Texas thing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ready to Make the Move to Austin?
Look, I am biased. I live here, I work here, I have been selling homes in the Austin metro since 2007. But I also just spent 2,000 words telling you when the other cities win, so I think that counts for something right.
If Austin is on your list (or even if you are still deciding), lets talk. I have helped dozens of families relocate from Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and out of state entirely. I know which neighborhoods match which lifestyles, which price points are realistic, and where the value is hiding. Check out our complete guide to moving to Austin for more details, or what it actually costs to live in West Austin and the Hill Country.
Reach out to Ed Neuhaus and lets grab coffee. No pitch. Just an honest conversation about whether Austin is actually the right move for you. And if it is not, I will tell you that too.
